Two tenured professors were let go from Phoenix Law School for opposing what they describe as the administration’s underhanded tactics to prevent first year students from transferring to other schools. Michael O’Connor and Celia Rumann both allege that they were fired from their positions at the school after opposing planned curriculum and policy changes, and that these changes brought about modifications in their employment provisions which, when not accepted, led to their termination.

Phoenix School of Law is owned by InfiLaw Corp, which also owns the Charlotte School of Law and Florida Coastal School of Law, and is the only for-profit law school in the Phoenix area. In 2011, Phoenix presented two proposals that were designed to change protocols for students and faculty, known as “Legal Ed 2.0.” O’Connor and Rumann allege that changes included in these programs were designed to make it more difficult for first year students to transfer out of the school via means of changing the curriculum to make courses incompatible with other institutions, grade classes strictly on a pass/fail basis so that other law schools would not know who the top students were, and ban the creation of recommendation letters. On the faculty side, the plan eliminated tenure, as the school’s investors would prefer fewer tenured faculty members.